"The value of data has been, for a very long time, underestimated by financial services companies," he added.

Andy Hirst, SAP's senior director of industry marketing, said another data trend that will arise will be the combining of all the structured and increasing unstructured data banks collect into "an insight that hasn’t been possible before" on itheir customers. "Banks can find new patterns…and new trends."

Achieving true customer-centricity, relationship-based pricing and marketing, and offering customizable services were also discussed as being a major focus for banks in the future. In fact, customer-centricity will be "the biggest area of innovation" going forward, Rieker noted.

"In the past, products have been launched inside out," he added." "Banks didn’t take into account customer feedback. They just launch a new product, and assume the customer will take it."

Rieker further noted that consumers are used to being able to pick and choose what they want out of a product or service in other industries, and banks will have to follow suit in order to be successful in the future.

Ultimately, even though banks face increasing competition from non-bank competitors, they do have many inherent advantages, as companies like PayPal, Google and others can't offer the wide range of financial products banks do. However, they can't afford to simply ignore trends in consumer behavior, and creating a customer-centric model going forward will be a major part of that.

Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio

Yes this was a big point of discussion as well, how banks will use social data and the ethical issues (one example brought up being if a bank monitors a competitor's twitter/FB feeds and responds to a customer who complains offering them a better deal)

I don't think that banks have the same level of authority to mine customer calls to others that the government has done. IF a bank digs into publicly revealed social network data to find a better more personal way to market to their customers as individuals, then we will see if customers are upset or not by the response to the personalized offer, as in, they buy it or not.

Although as you outlined there are many ways customers benefit from banks drilling deeper into customer data, I wonder if (at least short term) there may be some consumer, political and regulatory pushback because of the Snowden/NSA revelations -- if people are upset about the government mining their calls, emails, etc., they're going to be equally (more?) upset about banks doing it?